Hacker News Reader

In a way I feel like I might have misunderstood something within my self.

I agree with the assessment but I never connected trolling and trauma, because my personal concept of trolling is essentially a continual escalation of reductio ad absurdum. In that sense it's not really trolling or sarcasm, it's more of a way of livening up overly-serious conversations.

I should probably not refer to that as trolling as the intention isn't to fuck people off, gaslight them, traumatise them...but to soften the mood.

I don't think anyone is attempting to narrow the definition of trolling; but in general any appeal to more nuanced understanding is worthwhile too so don't take this as disagreeing with you.

I note that "doctrine" was also an important element of the definitions offered and regret that we do not question our doctrine (and its sources) enough even now.

>Trolling is as much a mechanism of creating emotional trauma among a large population as it is a mechanism for 'debating' in bad faith.

Perhaps this was not present in older societies (and other countries today) because people were not as touchy feely as the current generations...

And I'm not trolling. I seriously think modern western societies are too snow-flakey and touchy feely for their own good. It's like going out in life expecting padded roads, walls, and everything, lest you ever get hurt...

And that's despite older societies having it much harder, and having much more difficult problems to be "traumatized" with...

I say this without snark, but the only way I can imagine someone actually thinks this, is because that someone is not well read on history, or holds values that were more in vogue to be "traumatized" for in such past generations.

People forget that in those older societies, people were killed, jailed and fined for holding certain beliefs. People were literally burnt at the stake, witch hunts were something more serious than a twitter mob complaining, intellectuals wrote lengthy arguments about the immorality of certain views; for christ sake, "Marge & Itchy and Scratchy" is almost 30 years old.

So yeah, I hold the opinion that people who think today's society is more easily offended than past generations are either too disconnected to what past generations really were, or is shocked to find themselves on the receiving end.

We had dictatorships, civil wars, and other such things in my country not that long ago.

I have relatives who went through those things -- and other modern tragedies today. I have befriended, talked to, and interviewed people jailed and tortured for decades for their beliefs. Even family killed by previous regimes.

So, it's not like I don't know that people "were killed, jailed and fined for holding certain beliefs".

I do know however that people that had those things happen to them in real-time history and in their full horror, were much more resilient, courageous, and could even shrug them off.

The touchy feely, safe-space demanding people today, who get discouraged or hysterical for 1/1000th the offense done to them, are a regression and an insult to those people (whose actual sacrifices and efforts gave the rights to the snowflakes of today).

I don't see how that disproves my point, I also come from a country with a recent and ongoing history of hardship, just 6 years ago while I was on vacation, a shootout happen in front of my home while my father and I were painting; actual bullet holes were made on the wall we were working on, and yet after we saw the cars flee, my dad just shrug it off and continued painting. Yes, I know that people can be resilient and adapt to life's hardships

And still, social sensitivities can be quite complex. My dad, a man who accepted a rain of bullets as just one more of the life's hardships, can get quite uncomfortable to the point of refusing to eat, if you insist on passing the salt on his hand instead of leaving it on the table near him, and I just picked one of the weirder but he and a lot of people have some petty stuff that causes them great offense.

With the examples I gave on GP, my point was not that people endured hardships, but that people who offended societies sensibilities were harshly punished. If you think that society that got so offended by stuff like blasphemy, sexual preferences, and failing to follow caste systems or even other weird social customs, are more courageous or have a tougher skin, then we have a different definition of courage.

And I say this without making a moral judgement, maybe severe punishment from deviancy served as a societal glue that allowed to thrive despite the material hardships, or perhaps a case can be made on the pathological aspect of having real hardships and still devoting so much time on irrelevant stuff. Still my point is that I don't think people got any less offended than nowdays, and perhaps watching today's punishments on the offenders, maybe that's one indicator where we are getting better.

> I do know however that people that had those things happen to them in real-time history and in their full horror, were much more resilient, courageous, and could even shrug them off.

This is wildly untrue and outrageously offensive. Do you really think this? What evidence do you have for this? Today's youth are experiencing their own valid forms of discrimination, hate and violence fed by trolls and you are no judge of their pain. And why are you doing this whataboutism with the past anyway? What do you have to gain from saying lambasting those who suffer and whom with you share so little you can surely hardly understand their circumstance?

> The touchy feely, safe-space demanding people today, who get discouraged or hysterical for 1/1000th the offense done to them,

Who are these people? Do they really exist? I think you have made up, invented an enemy towards which you are directing these statements.

> are a regression and an insult to those people (whose actual sacrifices and efforts gave the rights to the snowflakes of today).

How on earth? Everyone I know today who cares to improve society is trying to avoid the atrocities of the past. Positing that reasonable discourse, backed by facts and logic, with an avoidance of 'trolling' and bad-faith acting, is a direct attempt to reduce the suffering and pain of the future so that we can avoid such horrible things from the past from happening again.

Your callous dismissal of today's youth looking to improve the world by reducing the spread of hatred and violence is exactly the kind of thing that enabled such horrid violence in the past.

We can see history rhyming. We can see the genocides being committed around the world, fed and enabled by trolls, and we are trying to stop it from happening. We are trying to slow down the intentional suffering hoist upon minorities today by reducing the online vitriol and hatred that creates such physical horror.

> This is wildly untrue and outrageously offensive.

Oh no, it's definitely true.

If not, can you give me a modern equivalent to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weary_Dunlop ? Prisoner of War under the Japanese for three years, suffering horrific conditions.

After the war "Dunlop forgave his captors and turned his energies to the task of healing and building."

>This is wildly untrue and outrageously offensive. Do you really think this? What evidence do you have for this?

This is wildly true, and 100% not offensive.

I've talked to such people, I'm in a country with actual historical scars and full of people that went through extreme hardships, I've interviewed dozens of them people, I've read tons of historical accounts, interviews, and so on.

>Today's youth are experiencing their own valid forms of discrimination, hate and violence fed by trolls and you are no judge of their pain

Well, I can be the judge of their pain (it's a free universe), and I can tell you that their pain of "discrimination, hate, and violence caused by trolls" is nothing compared to war, civil war, dictatorship, genocide, torture, and so on (all of which experienced numerous times in the last 100 years in my country).

It's a sad state of affairs that this has to even be spelt out, or that people think someone being called names by online trolls, or harassed at school for being X, or whatever, is as serious and as important as those kinds of events.

The argument here is "I shouldn't avoid emotionally traumatizing you because at some point, someone else in the future may emotionally traumatize you".

Perhaps there's a case to be made for exposing people to controversial or offensive ideas in a controlled environment to prepare for encountering them in an uncontrolled environment - in fact, this is frequently called a "safe space" and ridiculed by people who believe that modern societies are too "snow-flakey"!

But that's certainly not what internet trolls are doing.

[flagged]

> using machine guns to kill people who are trying to legally migrate to your country. To make those statements is to wage a weapon of war and to do it online and on TV en masse is a new kind of trolling that is physically dangerous.

Nobody is doing any of this and I am perfectly happy to dismiss such ridiculous claims.

This is not real. This is not physical. Nobody is machine gunning down people at the mexico border.

You you are the one who is engaging in trolling and lies by spreading such a message around.

>Let me be clear, then. The United States is committing a genocide against minorities as we speak and it is enabled and emboldened by "trolls". This is not touchy-feely.

The United States has committed some soft of genocide or another since the days of the Native Americans. That's not touchy feely.

Crying about this or that opinion being published, or whether a coworker can make or not make a comment, or what group is the more victimized for BS offenses (where usually the crying is made white middle/upper middle class self-appointed spokepersons) is.

And I'm not talking about the "children in cages" either. This is obviously not a kind of "touchy feely" issue.

Plus, the "children in cages" has been going on since forever one way or another. My people were hunted by the KKK back in the 20s and 30s for not being white enough. I've written (in other places) about the Mexican immigrants fueling the California agricultural sector, and how they're exploited and sent away when bosses are done with them (eg. the strawberry picking business).

Even the Wall is nothing new, there has been a wall, beatings, and killings at the border well before Trump. Now it's just fashionable to speak against it (because Trump), whereas under Obama 2 million could be deported and it was OK (and it didn't involve as many children imprisoned, so late night talk shows didn't feel the need to cover it).

Still, I'm not an American myself. But the hypocrisy is strong, as if all those "good souls" care about the "children in cages".

There are "children in cages" all over Europe, in camps for immigrants (where they're not allowed to leave):

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/10/life-in-italy-...

>Your ..... dismissal of the problems of youth....and use of .... to not finish...sentences makes it difficult to understand your point.

You could replace "..." with "." in my comment, and nothing would change of its point. Instead you've chose to point an inconsequential stylistic issue, and exaggerate it to death.

Let's make my point even clearer: aside from general economic prospects (college debt and so on), there are no serious "problems of youth" in 2019 in the USA in the white middle/upper middle-class population that cries about being "traumatized" the most. It literally never had been better trauma-wise, today when people cry the most about it, for anything and everything.

And I don't expect you to agree with this assessment. That's my opinion, it's a free universe.

> Crying about this or that opinion being published,

I have absolutely never once in my life seen someone cry over an opinion being published. I have, however, seen hundreds of people complain about others 'crying', or 'literally shaking' but I have never seen it once happen and I have been looking. I honestly think such people do not exist. Can you cite any? This is surely not the cultural phenomenon you make it out to be.

> Plus, the "children in cages" has been going on since forever one way or another.

Something happening in the past does not make it okay to happen today. Are you suggesting that nobody should protest children being put in cages, simply because it has happened before? I don't understand. Since it has happened before, and it's awful, and it's happening again right now, don't you think we should stand up and stay that it should be stopped?

> Even the Wall is nothing new, there has been a wall, beatings, and killings at the border well before Trump.

Again, just because something isn't new doesn't have any bearing on it being bad or not. In fact I think it emphasizes how important these issues are. They persist and we must fight against them fully.

> Now it's just fashionable to speak against it (because Trump), whereas under Obama 2 million could be deported and it was OK (and it didn't involve as many children imprisoned, so late night talk shows didn't feel the need to cover it)

What are you talking about? Putting children in cages, family removals, etc of legal immigrants is completely different from deportations of illegal immigrants.

Are you suggesting nobody should speak out against these atrocities or try to avoid them happening in the first place, simply because they have happened before? I don't get it.

> There are "children in cages" all over Europe, in camps for immigrants (where they're not allowed to leave)

That sounds awful. Everyone should be protesting this everywhere. Everyone should aim to avoid the circumstances that allow this to happen: chief among them is trolling.

>I have absolutely never once in my life seen someone cry over an opinion being published.

Well, I've seen then cry, demand it's unpublished, demand the person writing it is fired, and so on.

>I have, however, seen hundreds of people complain about others 'crying', or 'literally shaking' but I have never seen it once happen and I have been looking.

Well, perhaps not looking unbiased enough.

>Something happening in the past does not make it okay to happen today.

Which I didn't say in the first place. My point is that as an old thing this is not related to the recent touchy-feely behavior I spoke against. (Nor of course are the people kept in cages, or the people who complain about them, are complaining about touchy feely issues).

>Are you suggesting nobody should speak out against these atrocities or try to avoid them happening in the first place, simply because they have happened before? I don't get it.

No, there are two threads here: 1) tons of younger people today complain about touchy feely issues, and 2) most younger people complain about these serious issues only when it becomes fashionable (e.g. now under Trump or previously under Bush, not before under Obama or Clinton).

I argue that (1) the touchy feely issues should be dropped, and (2) the important issues should be complained all the time, not when it's in vogue.

>That sounds awful. Everyone should be protesting this everywhere. Everyone should aim to avoid the circumstances that allow this to happen: chief among them is trolling.

Trolling is nowhere in the list of things that "allow this to happen".

Capitalism, EU immigration policies, hypocrisy, exploitation, and other things are.

for a definition to be useful it needs to be as narrow as possible, otherwise declaring any form of argument you don't like as trolling would be...

That is just not true. Broader definitions are actually very useful when you're trying to describe general principles (like in law) — using a word that's too narrowly defined can limit the scope of what you're saying.

That's the difference between a principle and a definition, law has both - criminal offenses for example are more defined than the principle of tort, the more you want something to be useful as an accusation the more narrowly defined it needs to be or you just end up with a moral panic.